Khem-Noor

A Land Divided--but for how long?

As this session begins, the elves Feravyn and Lothiriel return to their home, a small settlement on the edge of a portal into the Feywild. As they approach, they are horrified to find that all of the inhabitants of their home have brutally killed each other, turning weapons and even tools and home implements against each other. In the middle of the town, the elves found a giant shard of what resembled clay or adobe. Feravyn examined the inside and found a rune-engraved chamber surrounding four manacles. Each manacle was a cuff lined with barbs and needles and encrusted with gory ichor. He attempted to remove the manacles and found that touching them instilled a horrid bloodlust that almost made him smash in his friend’s skull. Shaken, the pair thought to travel to a nearby wise man’s camp to ask for help.

As the party prepared to leave Kai’anan’s camp, two shaken elves emerge from the desert. Sefu, Torvanus, Garrosh, Feravyn, and Lothiriel all share their stories and agree to band together. The new group returns to the elves’ home and investigate further. Lothiriel discovers a trail of giant tracks that resemble those make by bears of the Feywild, complete with talons and some sort of cruel spiked heel. Garrosh examines the clay structure and studies the runes within, determining that the whole object was a physical and mystical prison for the entity known as The Which Turns Brother Against Brother.

The heroes track the dwindling trail of their quarry into the desert, almost losing the way until they happen upon a wonderful aroma of cooking meat. They find a silken tent behind a cook-fire. As they approach, their host (who was there all the time, didn’t you see him?) offers to give them some refreshment from their travels. The party slowly and grudgingly accept his hospitality. Lothiriel and Garrosh are both suspicious, eventually deducing that their robed host is in fact a djinn. The djinn offers to gamble with the heroes, a game in exchange for information. The party has all but spurned his offer when he reveals that his last player asked for information that may have led to the fall of the moon.

Garrosh agrees to lead the heroes in the game. The stakes are simple—enter and exit the djinn’s tent and claim a boon. The party enters and immediately find themselves in a tesserect-style space. Eventually, they find a crystal skull and use it to teleport to various levels in the tent. They encounter a room where dozens of people are trapped within paintings. Torvanus is grabbed by a pit fiend from within a painting; the successful use of skills enables the party to free him. One woman begs Lothiriel to take her child while Orcus glares at Garrosh from one hellish tableau. The heroes find themselves in a vast armory, swimming in a subterranean lake, and lost in a warehouse of boxes and crates. They stand amid stars and find a training room for children whose parents gambled them away. One child in this room discusses the “giant white wolf hyena man thing” that was just here and asking all the questions. The group wanders into a fancy dinner party held by a coven of imps. Even though they crash the soup course, the most fair imp, who happens to be one dressed in drag, keeps trying to seduce Torvanus just as the Nuns’ Tears soup is served. Luckily, Feravyn finds the teleport key and the group flees to a forest wherein they battle two animated bull-creatures. After defeating them, one rises as a wraith and the party manages to return it to death.

This completes the challenge. The djinn was true to his word and granted a boon to each hero. Feravyn was given a magic item that allows him to scry the closest Evil. Torvanus claimed an extra page for his book. Feravyn was given an augmented blade. Lothiriel asked for insight on the Four Evils and was given a map to a nearby ruin.

The adventure concluded as Garrosh used his eye to scry…he found himself seeing through the eyes of a beast that was roaming through Hawk’s Bill. He saw the crowds literally trying to tear each other limb from limb. As the vision faded, he saw Captain Torgosh turn his deadly breath weapon on a mob of people, literally slicing them into ribbons….

Our story begins in the town of Hawk’s Bill, a small but profitable center due to a local source of natron, a salt used in the county’s rich embalming process. The daily hustle and bustle of this town is familiar to Tarvanus, a drow warlock who has recently been inducted into the Preservers’ Guild, having sworn an oath to a fey patron who empowers him with ice and frost powers. On the outskirts of the town, a sorcerer named Garrosh Penndragon is on his way to arrange for the sale of some stone when a catastrophe strikes the town!

A massive object crashes to earth outside Hawk’s Bill, gouging a burning swath of destruction through the center of the town common. The meteor leaves puddles and rivulets of flaming ichor that even cause some of the stone buildings to melt and sway. In the tumult, a slave known as Sefu makes his escape from a cruel master who was crushed as the town fell. Sefu and Torvanus band together to help most of the townsfolk flee to safety. Regrouping outside, the two are tasked by Captain Torgosh, the captain of the watch, to investigate the object that crashed down.

The new team swiftly find that the town’s bane was a gargantuan serpent’s head, the size of a small house. Sefu manages to pry out a dinner plate-sized scale while Torvanus harvests a tooth. As the party ponders what to do next, they spy a crane in the distance being overtaken and slain by a swarm of some sort of insects. Returning to the town, they gather Garrosh and backtrack to the crane. Garrosh and Torvanus both recognize it as the familiar of a wizard known as Kai’anan. The heroes find a scroll case on the bird’s body containing the message “If ours are free, HIS are too..”

The group decides to travel to Kai’anan’s oasis to ply for information. As they arrive there, they witness the old man slumped within a sputtering magic circle. Investigating his circle triggers an attack by a group of giant scarabs! These foul monsters try to train the lifesblood from Torvanus, Sefu, and Garrosh and almost succeed in killing them just as they did Kai’anan and his bird. The party pulls out a win only to be engaged by a strange canine creature who breathes clouds of ticks at the heroes, continuing to drain their bodies’ energy. Through a good combination of spell and steel, the heroes take the day.

The dying Kai’anan imparts some information to the group……

In the days of yore, the children of Khem-Noor warred with the sons and daughters of the Shepherd King. Tired of mutual bloodshed, Ra and the Shepherd King entered into a pact. The Khem-Noorian gods would seize and contain the four great adversaries of the Shepherd King’s people in exchange for HIS agreement to imprison the desert peoples’ two banes. The Old Mage reveals that in exchange for containing Set the Betrayer and Apep, The Fang of the Sands, Ra and Thoth imprisoned The Bringer of Disease, The Denier of Substance, That Which Turns Brother Against Brother, and The End of All. Kai’anan charges the heroes to find and contain the four evils before the Shepherd King renders the pact inviolate and releases the evils HE is containing.

To aid in this task, the Old Mage bequeaths several magical items to the group: The Oldest Trick in the Book, Words Cut Sharper than Steel, and Knowledge Comes at a Price. He also gives Garrosh a key that summons an extradimensional space which the heroes use to contain the body of The Denier of Substance. As the sessions end, Garrosh casts Gentle Repose on the body of the evil…..

A blog for your campaign

While the wiki is great for organizing your campaign world, it’s not the best way to chronicle your adventures. For that purpose, you need a blog!

The Adventure Log will allow you to chronologically order the happenings of your campaign. It serves as the record of what has passed. After each gaming session, come to the Adventure Log and write up what happened. In time, it will grow into a great story!

Best of all, each Adventure Log post is also a wiki page! You can link back and forth with your wiki, characters, and so forth as you wish.

One final tip: Before you jump in and try to write up the entire history for your campaign, take a deep breath. Rather than spending days writing and getting exhausted, I would suggest writing a quick “Story So Far” with only a summary. Then, get back to gaming! Grow your Adventure Log over time, rather than all at once.